Category Archives: Political Economy & History

In Stormy Seas: The Post-war New Zealand Economy

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Otago University Press, 1997. 343pp.

A detailed look at the New Zealand economy in the twentieth century, and in particular its course since World War II. This is not just a history but a narrative about a problem’, defining, and ‘hopefully contributing to an understanding that will aid to its solutions’.

In Stormy Seas asks pertinent questions about some of our favourite national myths. The intial chapters examine the ongoing debate about the New Zealand economy, looking at such factors as external impact and internal response, the business cycle and growth, and problems of financing investment. Structural transformation, the farm sector, industry and energy, efficiency and flexibility, and ‘the market’ are all explored before the book closes with a discussion of the aftermath of Rogernomics and the decade of greed. (Publisher’s blurb)

The Relevance Of Rogernomics

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Chapter 15 of In Stormy Seas: The Post-War New Zealand Economy, p.211-231. (This is a draft which enables the search engine. Please go to source for quotes.)

Keywords: Political Economy & History;

Their outlook, not too carefully reasoned, and no doubtful scornful of scientific thought, makes them incapable of self distrust. Like almost all men of action they have a contempt for theories: yet they are often captured by the first theory that turns up, if it is demonstrated to them with an appearance of logic sufficient to impose upon them. In most cases they do not seem to see difficulties, and they propose simple solutions for the most complex problems with astonishing audacity.[1]

Bernard Ashwin: Secretary to the Nation Building State.

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New Zealand Studies, November 1997, p.13-21. This article contains material which informed but is not reported in The Nationbuilders, although there is material in the book which I did not have when I wrote this. This essay was in preparation for an entry in The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography.

Keywords Political Economy & History

Bernard Carl Ashwin (1896-1975), founder on the modern Treasury, was one of New Zealand’s great civil servants, and perhaps the most influential from the 1930s to June 1955, when he retired from Secretary of the Treasury.[1] Keith Sinclair’s biography of Nash has only a handful of brief references, but one says revealingly, `Fraser ruled in very close consultation with the Federation of Labour. The other powers in the land were Walter Nash and Bernard Ashwin.'[2] The assessment is echoed by John Martin `[h]e was clearly one of a small group – Nash, Fraser, and Walsh being the others – who were at the centre of the decision making process.'[3] In Ashwin’s case that `central role’ continued into the early years of the National government.

The New Zealand Experiment: A Model for World Structural Adjustment? (review)

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by Jane Kelsey New Zealand Studies, July 1997, p.37-38

Keywords: Political Economy & History;

Early in The New Zealand Experiment, Jane Kelsey writes about a 1993 colloquium sponsored by the Washington-based Institute of International Economics (IIE). Its convenor, John Williamson, is reported as suggesting that societies have a natural tendency to become sclerotic and their flexibility declines, a reference to Mancur Olson’s The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation and Social Rigidities.

The Commercialisation Of New Zealand

This entry was posted in Governance, History of Ideas, Methodology, Philosophy, Political Economy & History, Regulation & Taxation, Social Policy on by .


Auckland University Press, 1997. 288pp.

Well-known economist and commentator Brian Easton describes the origins, theory, history and politics of the dramatic change in economic policy in New Zealand from Robert Muldoon’s interventionism to Roger Douglas’s commercialisation and beyond. It is graphically illustrated with case studies including health, education, broadcasting, environment and heritage, government administration, the labour market, cultural policy and science. Lively broad ranging and controversial, this is a valuable commentary on the ‘more-market’ prevalent in New Zealand from the mid 1980s. (Publisher’s blurb)

A Coiled Spring

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Prologue to “The Commercialisation of New Zealand”    Keywords: Political Economy & History;  Following the introduction of refrigeration in 1881, New Zealand developed as a specialist pastoral exporter of meat, wool, and dairy products, mainly to Britain. Before that, distance from markets had confined the economy to exported quarried resources (especially gold) and wool, tallow,…
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Regarding Henry:

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The Absolutely First-Rate Refugee who was the Maker of the Modern Treasury.

Listener 17 May, 1997.

Keywords: Political Economy & History;

Henry Lang (1919-1997)

The refugees who fled the tyranny of Central Europe in the 1930s benefited New Zealand’s cultural, intellectual, and government life far in proportion to their small numbers. Examples range from architect Ernst Plishke to his stepson Heinrich Lang, who became Secretary of the Treasury, and contributed much else besides.

Was There a Treaty Of Waitangi?: Was It a Social Contract?

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A revised version of ‘Was There a Treaty of Waitangi, and was it a Social Contract?’ Archifacts, April 1997, p.21-49.

Keywords: History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy; Maori; Political Economy & History;

This paper arose out of consideration of what at first seemed to be a very straightforward problem.[1] In 1989 I was working with the Maori claims in regard to the broadcasting reforms.[2] I have told much of that elsewhere,[3] but the matter led to an investigation of the origins of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, in order to understand the entitlements to the property rights of the radio frequency spectrum by the Maori and by the Crown.

A Permanent Revolution?

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Revised version of lecture in the Stout Centre Seminar series “After the Revolution?”, 26 March, 1997, New Zealand Studies, July 1997, p.30-36.

Keywords: Political Economy & History;

It is over twelve years since the beginning of the revolution of the “commercialisation of New Zealand”.[1] Twelve years after the fall of the Bastille the French revolution was over, and Napoleon ruled. Twelve years after the October Revolution of 1917, the Russian revolution was over and Stalin had expelled Trotsky and Buhkarin. Neither country returned to a period of some sort of normality, but nor was there the view that the revolution was incomplete, and needed to be progressed.

Engineers and Nation Builders

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Keynote Address to the 1997 “Engineering Our Nation’s Future” Conference of the Institution of Professional Engineers of New Zealand, Wellington, February 5th.

Keywords: Political Economy & History

Today’s lecture is work in progress, which will one day become a book called something like “The Nation Building State”. It is concerned with one of the dominant themes of New Zealand’s economic and social development, the use of the state to build the nation, and the curiosity that in the mid 1980s that theme suddenly disappeared. Engineers had a central role in this nation building, so it is good to have an opportunity to talk to you about it. After all if we do not have an understanding of our past – from whence we came from, why we are where we are – then engineers will have little influence over the nation’s future, and where we are going.

The Political Economy Of Fish

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Dr Sutch Looked At Our Fishing Industry 35 Years Ago. What Would He Think Today?
Listener 18 January, 1997

Keywords: Business & Finance; Political Economy & History;

The fishing industry may not seem a likely paradigm for New Zealand’s economic history. Yet in January 1962, Dr Bill Sutch, public servant, economist, historian, writer, and New Zealand nationalist, persuaded a Nelson WEA summer school it was. Sadly, however, there is no written record of the speech. The challenge is to try to reconstruct it.

Treasury Man: Bernard Carl Ashwin, Secretary to the Nation Building State

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Listener: 5 October, 1996.

Keywords: Political Economy & History;

Bernard Ashwin was born on the banks of the Waikato, just a hundred years ago. He became one of the most powerful men in New Zealand. Keith Sinclair bracketed him with Prime Minister Peter Fraser, Minister of Finance Walter Nash, and the Federation of Labour (F.P. Walsh) in the 1940s. Ashwin’s influence continued for a quarter of a century after he retired. Yet he is hardly remembered in comparison to the other three.

Philosopher-Kings and Public Intellectuals

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Revised version of the Lecture to the 1996 Auckland University Winter Lecture Series, Still Fretful Sleepers: the Intellectual in New Zealand. 20 August, 1996.

Keywords: Political Economy & History;

Still fretful sleepers?(1) Has not New Zealand changed since Bill Pearson finished his “Sketch of New Zealand Behaviour and its Implication for the Artist” with that resounding call for the need to awaken New Zealanders from their fretful sleep?(2)

BOOKSHOPS AND POLITICAL SHOPS

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Paper for the Conference of Booksellers New Zealand, Auckland, July 30, 1996. Inner Wellington where I live is littered with bookshops. To start mid-city at Manners Mall, where Eileen’s Bookshop sells magazines, greeting cards, lotto tickets, but no books. A little way along is Unity, which sells only books except for a very few specialist…
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Elitism and the Election

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Just How Out of Synch Are the Interests of the Political Party Elite with Those of the Voters?
Listener: 13 July, 1996.

Keywords: Political Economy & History;

Once upon a time voting for a party for many people was a marriage for life. Nowadays it is more like a one night stand, consummated once every three years. This loss of loyalty leads to considerable anxiety by parties about their image, and the potential clients’ beliefs. Some insight is thrown on the inconsistency in the book Towards Consensus, by a group of university political scientists, Jack Vowles, Peter Aimer, Helena Catt, Jim Lamare and Raymond Miller. Their research is based on a sample of nearly 3000 New Zealanders who responded to a lengthy questionnaire at the time of the 1993 election. The book is rich with fascinating insights about political behaviour, but here we look at only voter and party elite attitudes to welfare and economic issues.

Psst, Have You Heard?

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The Rich: A New Zealand History by Stevan Eldred-Grigg (Penguin, $34.95)
Listener: 25 May, 1996.

Keywords: Distributional Economics; Political Economy & History;

Is this book anything more than tattle-tale? Significantly it ends with the words”What, above all, would I have done with Felicity Ferret?” Admittedly The Rich does not descend to assisting the semi-literate by putting names in bold: the better schooled may dip into the index of around one thousand names.

500 Years Late: the Effects Of a Decision by a Chinese Emperor in 1432

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Listener April 20, 1996

Keywords: Political Economy & History

The most important single date in New Zealand’s history is 1432, when Emperor Xuan De of China forbade the building of ships greater than 30 metres in length. A few years earlier a fleet commanded by Zheng He, with much bigger ships, had explored as far as Madagascar. The prohibition to build such ships prevented the Chinese exploration of Australasia, and their settlement of South East Asia to New Zealand. When Captain Cook arrived here 337 years later the population he met had brown rather than yellow faces. Today, 227 years after Cook, New Zealand is primarily a settlement of peoples of Polynesian and European descent.

Caversham Class

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The Marked Increase in Economic Inequality Has Widened Society’s Class Divisions.
Listener: 24 February, 1996.

Keywords: Political Economy & History;

Erik Olssen’s just published Building the New World is an outstanding contribution to New Zealand historiography and to our understanding of the origins of modern New Zealand society. Over the years he, his colleagues at the University of Otago, and their students have built up a detailed picture of the life, work, politics, and society, in the Dunedin working-class suburb of Caversham in the period from the 1880s to 1920s. Olssen points out that what happened in Dunedin 90 years ago may not apply elsewhere, or at other times. But having grown up in Sydenham, a comparable Christchurch suburb, I was intrigued by the resonances with my experience, especially about social class.

Economic Reform: Parallels and Divergences

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by Brian Easton and Rolf Gerritsen

The Great Experiment edited by F. Castles, R. Gerritsen & J. Vowles (AUP:1996), p.22-47.

Keywords: Governance; Political Economy & History;

Introduction

The Labour governments of the 1980s were the first in Australasia to be forced to come to grips with the increased ‘globalisation’ of their economies-that is, the effect upon them of growing international integration of both capital and goods and services markets. This globalisation, it has been argued (cf. Kurzer 1991; Lee & McKenzie 1989; Notermans 1993), has exerted an inexorable pressure for a convergence towards economic policy-making that removes barriers to free-market mechanisms. Globalisation and greater international competition-as the 1970s oil shocks ended the post-war long boom-supposedly made traditional social democratic economic policy difficult if not impossible (Scharpf 1991). Redistributive, interventionist and expansionary strategies could no longer be employed without supposedly fatally undermining aggregate macroeconomic performance.